PDA phones

Android PDA phone comparison

This page is a comprehensive comparison of PDA phones, updated as of November 2009. The focus is on Android phones. Phones with other operating systems have not been updated since 2009-May, and I don't plant to update them. Android, while still not entirely mature, is my phone operating system of choice, and is rapidly gainingmarket share.

Requirements

touch screen: resistive (i.e. you can use any object). Capacitive technology means you must use your fingers. No more operating the PDA on the ski slopes unless you take a glove off. On the other hand, resistive touch screens don't support multi-touch.

- physical keyboard proved extremely rarely used and it only added bulk, but that was before the web2.0 era

a compass is very handy during GPS navigation, when you are stopped somewhere and the GPS needs you to drive some distance (probably in the wrong direction) until it figures out where you are headed

camera flash to light the impromptu shots you take when you don't have a real camera ready ("the best camera is the one that you always have on you")

As of 2009-July, phones with a digital compass and camera flash were xtremely few, and they all run Symbian, with the exception of Samsung Galaxy.

Symbian

Connectivity

quad-band GSM is required and the vast majority of phones support it

for data access, beware that in the USA, the UMTS (part of the 3G family, also called W-CDMA outside of Europe) frequencies are 850 and 1900 MHz, with T-Mobile operating on 1700 MHz. Most of the world uses 900/2100 MHz, which makes a lot of phones unable to use 3G with US carriers. For comparison, the Apple iPhone 3GS supports UMTS frequencies 850/1900/2100. The alternative to 3G/UMTS is GPRS (or the newer EDGE), but even EDGE is painfully slow at practically 7-12 kilobytes per second with T-Mobile's access point epc.tmobile.com. EDGE doesn't work while a call is in progress.

Search and Comparison resources

phonescoop.com search for PDA phones with World Roaming, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Camera (640 x 480) or more, and Video Capture.NOTE: At the time of this writing, phonescoop.com did not include the HTC Touch HD in its database at all. Beware of missed results.

equivalent GSM arena search, which did find the HTC Touch HD. Note that restricting display size to 3.0"+ from 2.8"+ removes 16 phones from the results. For GPS navigation, however, a screen that covers the height of the phone is more important than wasted space at the top or bottom.NOTE: As of 2009-05-05, gsmarena.com did not have in its database the HTC 8125 (HTC Wizard) (launched in 2005, discontinued), nor the Samsung Instinct, announced on 2008-Apr-01. Beware of missed results.

- the speaker sucks, and is way quieter than the one in the HTC Hero. Quiet enough that the same wake-up alarm tone that reliably woke me up on the Hero, on occasion did not work on the Nexus One. You can, however, setup the "Beep-Beep-Beep" alarm, which is loud enough.